Europa Universalis III: In NomineReview

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The peasants are revolting! And they still stink on ice.

By Steve Butts

The Europa Universalis games have always embraced a level of organization and open-ended gameplay that is, without a doubt, a rare and acquired taste. Controlling the political, economic, religious, military, and technological direction of an entire nation over hundreds of years of real history is no easy task, and while things have been streamlined a bit as the series has evolved, it's still a daunting task. When developing expansions, Paradox Interactive has to walk a fine line between introducing new features that complicate the situation and smoothing out some of the micromanagement that bogs players down.

The game hardly needs to expand, but at least it's growing in the right direction.

The latest expansion, In Nomine, succeeds quite well. It offers some substantial changes to the core game that tend to limit the momentum of wars and colonial expansion. More vigorous rebels make war exhaustion and distant armies tough to handle, while new colony rules encourage the growth of substantial fleets while also reducing the micromanagement required to maintain them. Mission and decision options give the game a much more focused feel that shifts the game out of the sandbox and into a more historical setting.

Though there are plenty of big additions here, nothing comes close to the new rebel system in terms of how it affects gameplay. Rebels show up much more often now and they're harder to root out in many cases. What makes them such a compelling new element is that the rebels have their own unique objectives and can behave like sovereign nations.

Each rebel group that appears comes with a specific agenda. Some might want to break free and join another empire, others, particularly towards the end of the game, might want to establish their own country. Some rebels just want tax relief, or religious reform. How you handle each type of rebel depends on what they want. Naturally, you can just march in and crush them with your armies, but these new rebels typically have high morale and, in too many cases, unrealistically powerful generals.

Each group of rebels have to be dealt with according to their aims.

When the war exhaustion starts to take its toll on your national morale (and increases the number of rebellions you experience), you might be better off trying to negotiate with the rebels. This is an entirely new option and it's one that you'll seriously need to consider. Unfortunately, some of the rebels actually want you to cede entire regions for them to live in as sovereign nations. But even those rebels who merely want a little tax relief will still cost you a tremendous amount of prestige and bump your centralization slider a bit towards the less appealing end. You'll want to be careful how you spend your prestige though, because it has much more of an effect on your overall morale, stability and income.

There are lots more pirates as well and they can significantly impact your trade and colonies. This means that players who want to have substantial overseas empires will really have to work hard to build up a large enough fleet to discourage piracy. To make things easy, you can actually toggle a patrol order on each of your fleets to reduce the risk of pirates appearing nearby. The patrol option isn't good if there are enemy fleets nearby though, so you'll need to balance the needs of trade and colonial security with your overall war aims. Best of all, Paradox has removed the attrition that friendly fleets suffer in friendly waters close to home, so you're not going to have to keep refitting your fleets every year.